Google Analytics to only track specific events

Question

Is it possible to limit Google Analytics to only track certain events? Note: Tracking all events and then filtering at the dashboard would not be an acceptable solution here.

Context: for a specific problem we have, we are theorizing with installing a GA tracker in several client sites, reporting to a "property" we control. This would be a second GA tracker in addition to the ones they already have (which I understand is possible).

This second GA tracker would only track very specific events relevant to us. The clients would not wish to share other information (eg: page tracking) with us, and getting all clients to create users for us in their GA dashboards with appropriate filtering is not sustainable.

Is this possible? How?

Answer 1

Yes, you can track only events and not pageviews. The easiest way to add any tracking is to have the clients use Google Tag Manager and give you access there. You can then track just events to your specific GA property, and not set up pageview tracking that feeds to that account. If they don't want to give you GTM access, you can also provide instructions on which triggers and tags to add, but this is often a bit tricky and technical.

Basically what you need to do in GTM is create a trigger for each event - such as, say, someone clicking on a link with CSS class "cta". You also create a Google Analytics variable to save the UA number, and finally you create a tag which actually sets up the GA event - category, action, label, sent to your GA account variable and not theirs, triggered by the trigger you already set up. Rinse and repeat for each event you wish to capture.

Keep in mind this will only send these events to your GA account, so you'll want to let them know if they want to also capture this in their own GA account, they should set up a second tag - identical to yours, with just the GA account variable set to their account instead of yours.